


Char

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-05
Updated: 2010-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:14:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’ll it be?” Jayne asked as she perched up on a bar stool, skirts swimming around her.  Smoke filled his nose. <br/>Written for Round One, Challenge Two of Last Author Standing: Jossverse</p>
            </blockquote>





	Char

“What’ll it be?” Jayne asked as she perched up on a bar stool, skirts swimming around her. Smoke filled his nose.

Among other unpleasant scars, the lasting smell of fire marked Jayne. It crept up on him at the oddest times, blocking out all other sensations. He was ruined as a tracker. The tools of a mercenary had gone up with Serenity, leaving him weaponless. Not to mention, it would be damn near impossible to explain away a tiny slip of a girl that he couldn’t leave behind.

“Milk, please.” She leaned forward on one elbow to draw a finger through spilled beer.

“You on speaking terms with the cow again then?” He reached under the bar to draw out the glass container that he kept only for her.

“We have come to an agreement.” She wrinkled her nose. “You stink of flames today.”

“Don’t go poking in my head.” He growled without bite.

“It’s the anniversary.”

She remained slight enough for a stiff breeze to take her. Her hair was plaited in one long braid that brushed the back of her thighs when she walked. It was Jayne that brushed the mane and tied it up tightly in the morning for her.

“Anniversary of what?” He poured her glass of milk and set it in front of her.

“You know.” Her hand circled his wrist. “Don’t pretend.”

“Think I haven’t been hearing about it all day?” He pointed up at the nattering holoscreen. “‘Tween that and the folks comin’ in with new excuses for gettin’ drunk, I can’t help but know.”

“Time seems so unfair.” She said wistfully, turning her face up to the sparking colors of the holoscreen.

On the screen, the frightened lady doctor was telling her horrid story all over again. Her voice quaked explaining about the Pax and the Reavers. They played it every hour on the hour every Serenity Day. When her face finally vanished from sight, it was replaced by the iconic image of Serenity rising in triumph from a landing pad. Faked.

“They got the design wrong. Those fancy fins fell off years ago.” He muttered, drawing off a long beer for himself. The first sip tasted like ash.

“I want vegetables for dinner.” She informed him.

“We’re gonna starve eating like that.” He complained out of habit. “Man needs to eat meat on occasion.”

“You haven’t though.”

“Maybe I’m stuffing down steaks on the sly.”

He wasn’t.

It had been four long years since that first Serenity Day, when it wasn’t a holiday, but a desperate attempt to bring down a corrupt government. River had emerged from her fight with the Reavers, intact and bloodied, only for the Alliance to arrive moments later.

They didn’t wait for orders.

The crates the crew used for flimsy protection went up in a blaze, surprising both sides. The next few hours were a blur filled with death on both sides. They succumbed to terrible burns, oozing wounds, bullet holes and poison. It blurred together in a thick morass until Jayne couldn’t have said who had died how and in what order.

When the last fire gutted, it was only her left and him. They faced each other, weary and covered in gore.

“Can you pilot one of their ships?” He’d asked, throat raw from smoke inhalation.

She took his hand and led him to a shuttle. They left behind the planet and it’s looping message that would break apart society as thoroughly as it had ruined their lives.

“Choose somewhere.” He told her, leaning over the pilot’s seat and looking into the black.

In silence, her finger traced a line over a complicated star map. He still wasn’t sure if the choice had been truly random or if something in her mixed up brain had led them to this relatively well fed colony well off the beaten paths.

He’d found an easy job, tending bar. She managed a few small chores, making herself useful. They had clean clothes and fresh produce from her garden. She was still crazy, but Jayne barely noticed it anymore. He had his own mind to worry over.

The idea of cooking meat made him shake with remembered nausea and fear.

“I want to stop by the field.” She said quietly, taking another microscopic sip of milk.

“It’ll be late, I don’t get off for another hour.”

He wiped ineffectually at the bar with a wet rag, knowing already that they would go.He usually found it easier to satisfy her simpler wants and needs than to resist. After closing, they went up behind their house to the small patch of cleared ground that contained her painted rocks. She knelt down before Simon’s first as she always did, picking away at the gathered weeds.

“Where do you think we go when we die?” The question hung in the dark as it always did.

“You know what I think.” He scuffed at the ground with his toe.

“Tell me again.”

“I think we all go somewhere peaceful. Maybe it’s heaven and maybe it ain’t. I think we all get to put our heads down and rest.”

He stared up at the swollen moon that would soon light their way home. She slipped her hand into his. They looked over the empty cemetery they had made together and the smell of smoke billowed around them.


End file.
